UNDERSTANDING THE FOUR DIMENSIONS

OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Personal – team – organizational and inter-organizational

knowledge management

Ron Young

September 2010

Over 15 years ago, I was a co-author of a book called ‘Upside Down Management –
revolutionizing management and development to maximize business success’
McGraw-Hill Europe, 1995. At that time, I was concerned that our organizations were
too rigid, structured, linear, and information based, and what we needed to better
understand, at that time, was the need in a growing global knowledge society for our
organizations to become more like organisms. Organisms are flexible, holistic, fluid,
dynamic, and knowledge based.

I said at the time, People are organisms! People are very complex organisms.

Therefore it is obvious that limited and structured organizations have never been able,
nor never will be able, to develop organisms nor enable them to flourish, naturally, to
their full potential.”

Actually, “information based organizations are organized bodies which give orderly
structure to components, whereas knowledge based organisms are entities which take
the organized body further by connecting the parts that are interdependent and share a
common life!”

I started to look for better ways to develop and apply effective knowledge working
competencies within, and between, knowledge based organisms.

Over 10 years ago, my company Knowledge Associates International Ltd, was part of
a 2 million euro European Commission funded project and European collaborative
research and development team, called ‘Know-Net’, to develop a holistic framework,
methods and tools around the concept of Knowledge Asset Management. The detailed
research proceedings are published in the book ‘Knowledge Asset Management –
beyond process centred and product centred approaches’, Springer 2003.

At that time, I had developed and implemented effective knowledge working

competencies frameworks, systems and tools in organizations around the world. And I
was happier with frameworks that were more holistic and knowledge asset centric.

But I was most concerned with the different levels of effective knowledge working
within and between knowledge driven and knowledge based organizations.
In some organizations, I saw ‘organizational’ knowledge management initiatives. In
some organizations, I saw ‘team’ knowledge management initiatives. In some
organizations, I saw ‘personal’ knowledge management initiatives and, in some
organizations, I saw ‘inter-organizational’ knowledge management initiatives.

All of the above initiatives were very well intentioned, and without doubt, gave some
benefit to the organization.

But they didn’t seem to go any further.

What seemed to happen is that a KM strategy was developed along one of these
dimensions, as the focus, as the imperative, but there it seemed to end. Either the
initial KM champion left the organization, or the results from the initiative were found
to be mediocre at best, and even failure at worst.

I felt that this was very sad indeed. In many instances, I knew that organizations were
‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’.

From the EC project Know-Net in 2000, we developed the following holistic, and
knowledge asset centric framework that identified the four dimensions of knowledge
management, as follows:

Figure 1 – Holistic Knowledge Asset Framework

(Know-Net - EP-28928)
The outer ring of the framework is referred to as the ‘knowledge networking levels’,
the interdependencies of which facilitate the leveraging and flow of knowledge and
knowledge assets. We recognised four levels of knowledge networking: individual
level, team level, organizational level, and inter-organizational level.

These knowledge networking levels surrounded the four inner ‘KM Infrastructure’
components: strategy, structure, processes and systems, which, in turn, surrounded the
organizations key knowledge assets, as the primary focus.

It was our view that any organization that considered knowledge to be a key asset, or
even the key asset, needed a compelling and holistic organizational knowledge asset
centric framework and strategy to successfully implement the principles, processes,
methods, tools and techniques in all of these four knowledge networking levels and
dimensions of effective knowledge working.

Many organisations have only partially focused on this critical issue to date.

Furthermore, the strategies, processes, methods and tools are situational, and will,
therefore, vary according to each organisation and to each of the four dimensions.

Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide insights and a deeper understanding
of each of the four dimensions and, most importantly, a better understanding of the
inter-relationships between the four critical dimensions of successful knowledge
management – personal, team, organisational and inter-organisational.

The four dimensions

Let’s first take a deeper look at each of the four dimensions separately.

Personal Knowledge Management

A number of organizations have implemented a KM strategy for personal knowledge

management. This is a ‘bottom up’ approach and comes from the belief that by
improving the personal ability of employees to better identify, capture, store, share
and apply their personal knowledge, this will inevitably result, as an automatic
outcome, in better knowledge management at the team, organizational, and inter-
organizational levels.

The other driver for personal knowledge management is the growing need, for many
individuals and organizations, to better tackle ‘information overload’ and make more
sense of our world, to develop more focus, to become more proactive in task
prioritization and decision making, to better manage time and projects. This comes
from the belief that this will reduce stress, increase personal creativity and lead to
greatly improved work-life balance.

The personal, or individual level refers to the personal knowledge, capabilities,

experiences, competencies and personal development issues for each individual
knowledge worker.
Therefore, the strategies, methods and tools used for this dimension are at the
personal level, and include methods and tools to personally capture, learn, interpret,
envision, analyse, synthesize, communicate, create, share and apply.

Personal knowledge management has been greatly accelerated by mobile, wireless

and web-based tools such as smart phones, iPads, cameras and camcorders, personal
computers, search engines, tweeting, blogging, wiki’s (wikipedia) websites etc

I am convinced that personal knowledge management is the most essential life skill
for the 21st century for the knowledge worker.

Team Knowledge Management

A number of organizations have implemented a KM strategy for team knowledge

management. This is an approach that comes from the belief that teams are the key
work units or knowledge engines of the organization.

It has been recognized that a team that ‘collaborates’ well transfers knowledge
between members much faster, and, as importantly, is a powerful creator of new
knowledge. Project team leaders can now produce new knowledge as a key
deliverable, as well as, and alongside the traditional deliverables.

Team knowledge management, therefore, is based on ‘Share’ or ‘Pull’ models of

information and knowledge transfer, as opposed to the overused ‘Send’ or ‘Push’
models.It is also based on team knowledge plans.

With the introduction of powerful collaborative team technologies, in the late 1980’s
early 1990’s, it became possible, for the first time for more effective collaborative
virtual team working across organizations and across the globe.

As with personal knowledge management, team knowledge management has been

greatly accelerated by mobile, wireless and web-based tools communication and
collaboration tools.

At this stage, it should be mentioned that the dimensions of both personal knowledge
management, firstly, and team knowledge management, secondly, overlap heavily
with the notion of the ‘Learning Organization’ and the need to develop, at a personal
level, the five learning disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, shared vision,
team learning and systems thinking . This is described in more detail by Peter Senge
in his landmark 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The
Learning Organization.

Organizational Knowledge Management

Most organizations have first embarked on an ‘organizational knowledge

management’ approach. The intention being to introduce a KM strategy and a
supporting infrastructure for better creating, storing, sharing and apply knowledge
across the entire organization. This approach is primarily a ‘top down approach.

It starts by identifying the key knowledge assets of the organization that are needed to
achieve its objectives, and then sets out to develop and apply those assets as fast as
possible.
To do this, the organization sets up an organization-wide infrastructure to enable the
identification, capturing, storing, sharing and applying of knowledge, retention and
the re-use of knowledge assets. Processes to capture new learning’s and ideas before,
during, and after work events, and then turn them into good practice and knowledge
repositories are implemented. Organization-wide expert locators and communities of
practice are developed.

Powerful organizational knowledge systems and tools are used to support these
organization-wide knowledge activities, including intranets, knowledge portals,
taxonomies, collaborative work spaces, locators, network and community tools,
powerful search, document management systems, wiki’s and blogs, mobile and
wireless tools etc

Inter-Organizational Knowledge Management

The level of inter-organizational management refers to inter-enterprise relationships

and knowledge value networks. Hence, knowledge networks with customers,
suppliers, partners, competitors, sub-contractors, stakeholders etc.

Some organizations have embarked on these relationships at a global level, for

example, inter-governmental agencies, United Nations agencies knowledge networks
and the development of common national knowledge platforms etc.

Inter-Organizational knowledge management is based on the belief that the most

valuable knowledge sources and resources can be outside your own organization.
Commercial organizations and educational establishments are increasingly co-
partnering with customers, suppliers and even competitors, to collaborate, share and
develop new knowledge and innovative products and services together.

Naturally, the global World Wide Web has enabled a common communications,
collaboration, learning, information, and knowledge sharing environment.

Global mass collaboration initiatives, knowledge systems and knowledge ecologies

are now rapidly emerging.

Inter-relationships between the four dimensions of Knowledge Management

As can be seen, from the brief descriptions above of each of the four dimensions,
viewed separately, they are, each, very powerful in their own right. They are
completely different in their approach. They tend to have quite different KM
strategies and can use quite different methods tools and techniques to successfully be
implemented.

But they are not separate!

They are all one and the same thing. One knowledge entity made up of individuals!
The only thing that is different is the scale of the knowledge entity.

Going back to my earlier concern, we must not put people, who are highly complex
organisms, into limiting organizational structures and expect them to perform at their
best.
Importantly, each part, each person, each dimension, is related to each other part,
person and dimension, and to the whole.

As you improve any part, so you improve all the other parts, and the whole. It is
impossible not to do so. Each part is vital to the whole. This results in a virtuous, or
upwards spiralling path of increased value .

More importantly, if any part is missing, it disables the whole from achieving its
overall effectiveness. This results in a vicious, or downwards spiralling, path of
decreased value.

If you examine, in more detail, the characteristics of each dimension you will discover
that they are all vital to the whole, but no one dimension is complete. Nothing,
ultimately, should be omitted.

For example, the most common mistake is to embark on organizational knowledge

management, with its espoused organizational benefits, without any real individual
benefits and personal knowledge management. People, in this case, treat KM as yet
another organizational initiative and there is no, or very little, motivation, no clear
‘what’s in it for me’, no sustainability. This is doomed to eventual failure.

As another example, if the organization embarks only on personal knowledge

management, it can only go so far before it reaches its personal limitations in scaling
and working across the entire organization and with its stakeholders. This can bring
reasonable results, but only mediocre results compared to what is really possible.

If an organization embarks only on team knowledge management, it will miss the

extra powerful benefits that personal knowledge management brings to the team, and
the benefits from an enterprise wide organizational knowledge management
infrastructure. It, too, will also only go so far before it reaches its team limitations in
scaling and working across the organization and its stakeholders.

If an organization embarks only on inter-organizational knowledge management,

without the benefits from personal, team and organizational knowledge management,
it will certainly reach limitations and produce mediocre results.

But knowledge management can and should produce extraordinary results!

Extraordinary knowledge management results require a KM strategy that is designed

to develop a synthesis from, and between, each of the four critical dimensions in the
knowledge networking levels.

Extraordinary knowledge management requires a holistic approach. The sum, the

emergent properties from the whole, will be much greater than the parts!

Towards a Synthesis

So is it simply the case that we only need to recognize this holistic approach and
implement it, in all four dimensions to achieve extraordinary knowledge
management?
Is there a more important dimension, or sequence of dimensions, to implement before
others?

Are their any tools and techniques to help us?

The key to implementing successful knowledge management, or any new initiative

you can think of, at any level, is to be able to demonstrate, without doubt, clear
business value. By business value, I mean that the business benefit clearly exceeds the
cost.

If there is clear business value, there is no final cost. Rather, it is a cost not to do it!
Every sensible senior manager of any business, will wholeheartedly support business
value.

So, for knowledge management initiatives, I recommend ‘value frames’ which are
small discrete packets of work, normally of a relatively short duration of weeks or
months. Each value frame of work has a mutually agreed business value and an
agreed method for measuring it. At the end of the value frame of work, there is a
value assessment. If the value is achieved or exceeded, the next value frame of work
can be agreed.

The first value frame could be the knowledge management vision and/or strategy, for
the senior management to approve. A value frame could be a work plan. It would
contain an initial assessment of the number and type of value frames required for a
major KM project.

Then the first principle of knowledge working will emerge, naturally. That is,
‘learning can and will certainly occur’. When people start to see the value based
deliverables emerge they will say ‘aha, I now better understand. Does that mean that
we can now do ….? etc’

Working with discrete value frames is an iterative process. It is a methodology that

can lead to accelerated value in the organization. Requirements will most certainly
change as a result of learning. Initial value frames of work from the initial work plan
will be refined and, sometimes, redefined or even deleted. New value frames may be
added.

Most importantly, because each value frame is relatively short, the risk to
management is only one value frame.

Furthermore, with relatively short discrete value frames of work, the organization will
receive very quick business value wins.

After successfully delivering value to management by developing a KM vision linked

to the organizations vision, and a KM strategy and work plan, a KM pilot value frame
should be developed and agreed around personal and team knowledge management .

In this case, a pilot business area, normally a project or business process, and team
should be selected. It is suggested that the KM pilot period is 6 months duration, to
allow sufficient time for teaching and applying both personal, and team knowledge
management competencies, methods and tools. The value for the KM pilot as a
success, as for all value frames, must be mutually agreed and measurable. There are a
growing number of personal and team KM pilot measurement tools available.

The aim and objective of the knowledge management pilot, at personal and team
level, is to demonstrate, beyond doubt, the increased productivity, quality, buy-in of
the pilot members, scalability and sustainability of knowledge management, by
applying some fundamental km principles and developing some key knowledge
working competencies. (By competence, I mean the right knowledge, skills and, most
importantly attitude.)

With a successful KM pilot value frame completed, the pilot team will be your best,
and most natural, change agents to the rest of the organization..

When sufficient personal and team value frames have been completed (some
organizations are happy with just one demonstrable pilot at this level, but others may
require several successful pilots around the organization), a more detailed,
overarching knowledge management infrastructure value frame of work can
commence.

This will then enable the organization to embark on value frames of work at the
organizational knowledge management level.

Finally, the demonstrated value achieved at the personal, team and organizational
levels can be extended to value frames of work at the inter-organizational level.

Throughout, personal motivation and knowledge working competence, together with

team motivation and knowledge working competence, is fuelling organizational and
inter-organizational knowledge working competence.

Throughout, measurement tools and techniques, and reporting systems can be

employed to clearly demonstrate the value gained for the organization.

This is putting the ‘horse before the cart’. So many knowledge management
initiatives, that I have observed, have been only organizational methods and
technology driven. They are top down only. They have put the ‘cart before the horse’.
To continue the analogy, ‘you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink it
unless it wants to’.

Conclusion

The above sequence of implementing the four dimensions of knowledge management

is not the only sequence. The above strategy and method of using value frames, for
risk assessment and iterative development, that embeds continuous learning as it
occurs, is not the only strategy and method.

But it is a sequence, strategy and method that works. It will produce extraordinary
value and extraordinary knowledge management if it is applied properly.

I also positively challenge every organization that is interested in successful,

effective, and extraordinary knowledge management to ask itself if it is applying a
holistic approach to all the four dimensions discussed in this paper? Is the
organization achieving increased value through a virtuous upward spiral of effective
knowledge working.

I also challenge organizations that seek external help from knowledge management
consultants to ask the consultants to demonstrate the value and benefits they are
gaining as individuals and teams, at least. If they cannot, then please run away as fast
as you can!

I have the great privilege in 2010 and 2011 to conduct public master classes in
understanding the four dimensions of knowledge management, and private
organizational workshops, across the world for KM practitioners, organizations and
institutions. Classes and workshops have been run and are scheduled in Europe, Asia
and the USA. In these master classes and workshops we explore together the above
strategies, methods, tools and experiences.

We discuss and share our collective knowledge and experiences to better achieve
organizational results through effective knowledge management.

I look forward to your feedback, your experiences, and even better ways to ensure that
knowledge management, in all its dimensions, is achieved.

Naturally, I will update this paper with new and better learning’s and experiences, as
they occur.

Ron Young

END

(last updated 1st September 2010)